An AI policy for a small school: where to start

If your staff are using AI and you have nothing in writing, you already have a policy. It is just whatever each person decided on their own. A one-page document is enough to replace that.

Write about staff first

Student-facing rules matter, but they depend on your curriculum, your tools and your community. Staff use is simpler and it is happening now. Start there and add the student side once you know what staff are comfortable with.

Five questions the page should answer

• Which tools may staff use for school work?
• What must never be typed into one?
• When does AI-assisted work need to be disclosed, and to whom?
• Who do I ask when I am not sure?
• When will this be reviewed?

If a draft answers those five in plain language, it is useful. Anything beyond that can wait for version two.

Be specific about what stays out

"Do not share sensitive information" is easy to agree with and hard to follow. Name the real things: student names with marks, health and learning-support information, photos, and anything covered by your privacy obligations. A list of examples teaches faster than a principle.

Have the right person read it

An AI tool can give you a decent first draft. It cannot tell you what your board, your association or your insurer requires. Whoever is responsible for privacy at your school should review the final version, and any sentence about law or agreements should be checked by someone qualified to check it.

Ask staff before you finalize

A policy people helped shape gets followed. Share the draft, ask what does not match how they work, and fix that before it goes out. Put a review date on it. These tools change quickly and a policy that never gets reread goes stale.

There is a prompt that produces a first draft with the parts needing review flagged: A first draft of a staff AI policy.